Protomelas sp. "Steveni Taiwan" (Taiwan Reef)

[ikevi]

Ok so not to through wood on the fire from another post (IE no spats in my threads). But I am curious about one aspect.

When your guys go into full display mode Does he loose all (or almost all) his bars... (AND if you don't have this fish and like haps, get one asap, dang it.)
So first the main link:

http://www.cichlid-forum.com/profiles/species.php?id=1235

Now my newer to older shots of the one guy I photoed the most. (Newest most dominate)

Now I can't show him fully dominate in my tank since I never got one off, and now the red empress took that position. (I don't mind as you can see.)

(All the following I just took like 30 minutes ago or less.)

Anyways the odd thing is I noticed that you can see even in albinos where the strips should be:

Sub dom:

Dominate:

So the point. Would those of you please share if your dominate (now he really does need to be alpha dog, not just second man on the totem pole) has much of any stripes. I want to clear this up in my head.

And yes I realize that pictures can be misleading... hence me wanting you to voice what you have seen personally.


Ok it is late, I need to work tomorrow. Hope to come back to find out what other people have experienced.

 

[bal]

ahhh just beautiful....wonderful shots and a grand example of a male and an albino taiwan....

havent visited the thread your referring to yet, but will eh, read through it in a moment....lolol...lfe is toooo short yanno?
i tried to work with youtube this morning to stick on three videos, i have more but i was just trying to open the acct and toss something up....

so though not the best lighting, i caught him breeding with one of his females....

you can see in the video as well, that sometimes he is showing his bars faintly and sometimes he isnt....though even when displaying i have seen him showing the bars very strong.....so even though normally we associate showing the verticle bars as fear or uncertainty, it might be a bit different in these guys ....
and? our taiwan was definetly alpha male, maybe not in the tank, but amongst his own for sure...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoROKM_wuZo

 

[Red Devil]

I cannot help but love these guys ..they are just gorgeous..but that albino taiwan reef really takes the cake.. beauties!!!

 

[mike dunagan]

bars go away...

 

[duke33]

WOW! To bad I can't get my ph up that high.

 

[Red Devil]

I cannot wait for this little guy to look like that...